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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26500438">keep the home fires burning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/corpsesoldier/pseuds/corpsesoldier'>corpsesoldier</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The People's Tomb Fic Jam 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Discord: The People's Tomb (Locked Tomb Trilogy), F/F, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Pride, gideon is a jock and processes emotions by working out</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:46:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,076</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26500438</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/corpsesoldier/pseuds/corpsesoldier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gideon reflects on what she has left to give.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The People's Tomb Fic Jam 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>113</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>keep the home fires burning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>takes place during some unspecified hypothetical future time where gideon-in-harrow is with the BOE. </p><p>written for the discord jam prompt: "pride"</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gideon stood in front of the cracked mirror and carefully applied paint to the hollows of Harrow’s eyes, smeared large black swathes under her cheekbones. The paint wasn’t blessed—who would bless it? And Gideon didn’t know the sacramental skulls the way Harrow did, didn’t know the intricate layers of meaning and history for each one. She did her best to replicate the one Harrow favored at Canaan House. Gideon was sure it wouldn’t pass Harrowhark Nonagesimus muster, but Harrow wasn’t fucking here, was she?</p><p>“It’s stupid to put this on before exercising,” Gideon said into the mirror, avoiding her own eyes. “You know that, right? I’m going to sweat half of it off.”</p><p>Harrow’s face regarded her silently. The pissed off expression it wore didn’t fit right around the eyebrows or mouth. Gideon turned away with a sigh.</p><p>The tiny box of a room felt like a cage, the plaster cracked and crumbling, one corner of the ceiling stained dark from an old leak. Gideon paced like a trapped animal, the room only a few steps wide in any direction. What she wanted was to run. She wanted to jog up and down the steep stairwells of the Ninth House, to feel the hot, welcome ache in her muscles while the chill air on the uppermost levels dried her sweat and pulled goosebumps from her flesh. </p><p>Instead, she fumbled Harrow’s too-long hair into a loose ponytail and set to the humiliating task of doing push ups against a desk.</p><p>Or it might have been humiliating, if Gideon had any pride to bruise. She grew up in Drearburh, was worked like a dog by Aiglamene, crushed underfoot by Crux, cut down by its Reverend Mother and Father and sainted Reverend Daughter. Being the least loved child of the Emperor’s least favored house didn’t leave much room for pride.</p><p>She hadn’t been too proud to slither up the entire length of a fetid air duct during one memorable escape attempt. She’d emerged, filthy and with spiders in her hair, from some half-forgotten vent in the middle of an ice field and started walking, somehow believing there was somewhere else to go in all that emptiness. Somewhere they would welcome a crass, gangly child, sit her by a furnace, and feed her something that tasted of more than salt and ash. After a few miles, when she found nothing, she hadn’t been too proud to turn around and crawl right back to the House of the Ninth. </p><p>It was that or die, and Gideon had no plans to die at the time.</p><p>Harrow’s arms started to shake after a single set, and even that much endurance was the result of Gideon’s time and effort. Her necromancer’s heart thumped pitifully against her ribs. </p><p>“I asked you for one bloody thing,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Do some fucking push ups. But no, you made a damn bone suit instead. Not everything has to be fucking bones, Nonagesimus.”</p><p>What had pride gotten Harrow, huh? It kept her from asking any of the other houses for help while her congregation shrank and shrank to nothing. Made her board the shuttle to Canaan House, made her drag Gideon along, all so she could restore the Ninth on her own terms. If she’d been a little less prideful, she’d be tucked away in the depths of Drearburh still, leading prayers for a corpse, and maybe Gideon would have finally made it into the Cohort that last fateful attempt, or the time after, or the time after that.</p><p>She could have, eventually. Could have lived her fantasy of sending back prize money and pictures of herself on a foreign planet, bloodstained and hot as hell, and Harrow would sneer at her from a million miles away. Gideon could have left, and it would have been fine, because there was nothing in Drearburh that killed bitchy little necromancers except old age.</p><p>Gideon’s breath tore out of Harrow’s throat. Her arms shook and ached and burned and Gideon still fought gravity to lift her necromancer’s negligible weight. She bit off her frustrated cries before they escaped her mouth. She knew if she made too much noise that Camilla would come in and make her stop, and Gideon didn’t want to stop until Harrow’s muscles felt like they would peel off her bones in protest. And only then because if she caused any real damage, the Lyctoral healing swooped in and stole all her progress away.</p><p>Really, she wanted to keep going until her brain was silent, but Harrow didn’t have the stamina for that. Gideon had to settle for pain.</p><p>Pain was familiar. Gideon had long ago learned how to take comfort in any number of familiar hurts. She had worked her ass off every day for years with her sword and laid awake at night listening to the chorus of her body’s many aches. She earned her place as cavalier, even if at first she hadn’t wanted it. She was strong, fast, she knew how to fight and how not to die. It might have been the only thing she was ever proud of, and even then, she hadn’t known it until—</p><p>
  <i>For the love of the Emperor, Griddle, you are something else with that sword.</i>
</p><p>Harrow’s knuckles were white on the edge of the desk. </p><p>All that work, all that time, and it still hadn’t been enough. Turned out the most Gideon Nav could do for her House, for her necromancer, was die. She’d put what was left of her miserable life between Harrow's teeth and she’d been too goddamn <i>proud</i> to swallow and live and <i>not die</i> and now she was—</p><p>Harrow’s arms finally gave out and Gideon collapsed to the floor, her bony knees ringing with the impact. She rested her forehead against the lip of the desk and gasped with something more than exhaustion.</p><p>Harrow was somewhere. She had to be. Gideon didn’t know where, but she would know if her necromancer had slipped away for good, into the River or whatever the fuck else happened to stubborn bone witches when they died. Gideon would know.</p><p>There was a storm coming. If she wanted to keep Harrow’s body in one piece for her, Gideon needed to be able to lift her sword without Harrow’s shoulders threatening to tear clean off her torso. That, at least, she could do.</p><p>She sat and caught her breath, and then stood up. Sit ups, next.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can come say hi on tumblr <a href="https://corpsesoldier.tumblr.com">here!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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